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Tuesday

Welcome to Tuesday! In today’s newsletter:

• Discover different kinds of goals for varying areas of your life

• Why you should reframe things you want to do as goals

• A credit card to help you reach your financial goals

• The importance of celebrating your accomplishments

Discover 8 Goal Types for Different Areas of Your Life

Goals are an amazing way to set milestones and track our steps to achieve them. And they can apply to so many different areas of our lives!

But setting goals can also be daunting — how do you know where to begin? Knowing a few different kinds of goals and identifying how you can use them to reach achievements in various areas of your life is a solid place to start.

1. Short-term goals: These are goals you aim to achieve within a shorter period of time, like less than a year. They may be for the week, the month, or a little bit longer. These might be individual milestones that add up to lead toward a bigger long-term goal.

2. Long-term goals: These are not immediately achievable and may include multiple smaller steps along the way. These are big-picture goals you set for a few years in the future — like buying a house, going back to school, and so forth.

3. Self-care goals: We may not think of setting goals in this area, but self-care is critical to our overall well-being. This could include cooking a specific number of times a week, adding a new self-care practice to your daily routine, and so forth.

4. Stretch goals: These goals challenge you to do something you’ve never done before and encourage you to grow along the way! This may include pivoting your career, learning a new skill, or running a 5K.

5. Financial goals: From paying off debt to building an emergency fund to saving for retirement, these goals can be broad or specific, depending on your priorities.

6. Social goals: This can include getting more active in your community, staying connected with family and friends more regularly, and meeting new people!

7. Career goals: Career goals may include being more productive on the day-to-day or aiming for a promotion.

8. SMART goals: Short for “specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based,” these goals are easy to track and can help you measure your progress.

Why You Should Reframe Things You Want to Do As “Goals”

The saying “We are our own worst critics” can ring true for many. We may feel hard on ourselves when we fall short of the rules and habits we set.

However, this may cause us to feel even worse when we don’t do the things we hope to do. Instead of looking at things we want to do as things we “have” to do to feel good about ourselves, we’ve found it immensely helpful to shift perspective and look at them as goals.

When taking this point of view, it’s most helpful to look at something as “It’s great if I reach this goal, but if I don’t, that’s okay. Any progress is great progress.”

Looking at something as a goal instead of a rule helps us give ourselves more grace in achieving it.

For example, if you want to make morning movement a part of your week, you may set a goal to get up early and do that for a couple of days. If you make a “rule” that you have to wake up early and do it, it can make you feel down on yourself if you sleep in or take more time to rest.

However, having this as a goal makes it something that can feel exciting to accomplish. And if you end up staying up late the night before or were tired and not up for it, that’s okay!

Plus, goals are exciting and can help us stay focused on what we want to do — which is way more fun than looking at those things as obligations!

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The Importance of Celebrating Your Accomplishments

Many of us have been there — you reach a goal you’ve been working toward for a long time, only to immediately think: “Okay, what’s next?”

Working toward a goal is exciting and can spark motivation. However, it’s also important to take time to bask in our successes and the hard work that paid off as we reach our goals!

Celebrating these accomplishments helps us maintain motivation over time. Plus, it’s a great self-care practice to speak kindly to ourselves!

Here are a few ways you can celebrate your successes:

• Make time to do something you love

• Take some time to sit in the feeling of reaching that goal. How does it feel physically and mentally?

• Treat yourself

• Celebrate with friends and family

Parting Thoughts

• ✅ Tue or False?: True, goals can lead our brains to rewire themselves so we can achieve our goals!

• 🙋🏼‍♀️ Snapshot Of The Day: We'd love to see moments from our readers lives that they are proud of! If you recently accomplished an achievement, experienced a joyful moment, or are proud of a picture you have taken, be sure to capture it on camera and send it to us for a chance to be featured next week! 

• 💭 Final Self-Care Thoughts for Today: Setting goals for different areas is a great way to stay motivated and focused on our futures.

Enjoying Note to Self?

Know of a great self-care tip or article you'd love to share with the community? Want to send us pictures of you completing one of your self-care rituals? Email us at [email protected]!